Anyone can start a website and call it news these days. The harder part is giving people a reason to actually trust what you publish. So here’s a straight explanation of how things work at South Africa Tribune. No legal jargon, no corporate spin, just how we actually go about this.
How We Find Our Stories
A lot of our stories start with something official, a government statement, a press release, an announcement from an organisation. Other times we’re reading what’s already out there from bigger news outlets and notice something’s missing, or think a story deserves more context than it got.
We also watch what people are searching for on Google Trends and what’s being talked about on platforms like X and Reddit. That tells us what’s on people’s minds, which topics are picking up steam. It doesn’t tell us what’s true though. Something can be all over social media and still be completely wrong. So trending isn’t the same as confirmed, and we treat those two things very differently.
How We Check Our Facts
Before something gets published as fact on our site, someone has actually checked it. That could mean pulling up an official document, reaching out for a direct comment, or seeing if the claim holds up against what other credible sources are reporting.
Is this process perfect? No. Nobody’s is. Sometimes information changes after we’ve published, sometimes a source turns out to be less reliable than it looked. But there’s a difference between making an honest mistake while working with the facts available at the time, and just publishing whatever sounds good without checking it first. We aim for the first one, always.
Breaking News and Developing Stories
Big stories rarely show up complete. Usually you get pieces of it first, official confirmation later, and the full picture only becomes clear after a few hours or even days. When we’re covering something as it breaks, we say what we actually know at that moment. We don’t guess and present it as fact.
Once more details come through, we go back and update the article. That’s just how news works. Waiting until everything is fully confirmed before publishing anything would mean readers miss out on information while it still matters.
Original Writing
Nothing on this site is copied from somewhere else and dressed up with a new headline. Our team writes every article themselves. If a story we’re covering relies on information from another outlet or an official source, we say so and link to it.
The point isn’t to just repeat what everyone else has already said. It’s to explain what a piece of news actually means for someone reading it here, in South Africa, dealing with South African realities.
Corrections and Updates
We get things wrong sometimes. When that happens, we fix it and we’re not shy about noting that a correction was made. Pretending otherwise doesn’t help anyone.
Updates are a different thing from corrections. An update usually just means fresh information has come in on a story that was already developing, not that the earlier version was wrong. Either way, if a reader flags something to us, we actually go check it rather than ignoring it.
Opinions and Statements
If you’re reading an opinion piece or an analysis on our site, it’ll be labelled as one. That’s not a news report, and we don’t want anyone confusing the two. The same goes for quotes and statements from officials or public figures. When someone says something, we report that they said it. That’s not us vouching for whether it’s true, unless we’ve gone and checked that ourselves.
Political Reporting
Politics in South Africa gets heated, and we try to keep a level head covering it. We’re not backing any political party, and we don’t shape stories to make one side look better than another. Our job is to lay out what happened so readers can decide what to make of it themselves.
The Use of AI Tools
Like plenty of newsrooms now, we sometimes use AI tools while working, mostly for research or organising information. But a real person on our team reviews everything before it gets published, and it’s that person, not a piece of software, who’s responsible for what ends up on the site. We’re not using AI to invent quotes or make up sources. That’s a line we won’t cross.
Reader Feedback
If something we published feels off to you, wrong, confusing, unfair, tell us. Honestly, a good chunk of the mistakes we catch come from readers pointing them out before we notice ourselves. Reach out through our contact page, and if it’s a genuine concern, we’ll look into it properly.
